The State of Contract Talent Management and the Role of HR

21 January, 2009

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Only about half of organizations in our survey report that they are able to identify, assess and minimize worker misclassification and co-employment risks for contract workers, and fewer than half are confident in their ability to capture, approve and track time and expenses for contract talent.

Furthermore, greater than 50 percent of organizations report that they disagree or strongly disagree that their organization can manage contract talent well by a variety of measures. Slightly fewer than half of our respondents agreed that hiring managers have a simple and consistent method to obtain contract talent and handle billing and payment.

Clearly, there exists a gap in most organizations where contract talent management is concerned, despite the fact that contract talent has comprised a large percentage of the workforce for many years.

This fact is emphasized by a 2008 Contract Labor Management study by Aberdeen Group, titled “Contract Labor Management: Permanent Solutions for Temporary Workers.” According to the nearly 330 executives that participated in that survey, “… contract labor programs have been in existence for some time. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of respondents indicated that they have had a program in place to manage this category for more than five years.”

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